Afterimage
by Darkwalk12
Summary: "Matrix." Barely a breath to hiss the word that burned the inside of his mind like an afterimage. It was so bright. So very very bright.


June should have known immediately that something was wrong. She should have known when she pulled in to see a strange motorcycle in the garage. Should have known when he couldn't give a straight answer on where he'd gotten it. Should have known the tiny shakes in his hands were from something far more nerve-wracking than the threat of being caught out in a lie.

She knew the signs. But she trusted him when he said not to worry. The problem was, Jack was generally very good at staying out of trouble. And it have been quite awhile since she'd had any reason to believe he was in a situation where he couldn't look after himself.

So when she got a call early the next day that he hadn't shown up to school, the part of her mind that was unsurprised immediately brought up the tremors from the night before. Cursing herself for not paying more attention, June convinced the ward manager to let her leave early to go check on her sick son. Thankfully, all her extra hours put in earned her leeway. Driving straight home, June parked the car on the road. She didn't want to waste any time if it was as bad as she feared.

But upon stepping out, she heard an unfamiliar voice in the garage. June paused, wondering if maybe she had misjudged, before striding forward and yanking the door up. A metal giant stared at her with a startled look on it's face. The woman stared back. That was not what she was expecting.

Tall but thin, the giant's armor was the same shade of blue as Jack's bike. No, it was his bike. It had to be.

With a frown at the giant, June turned sharply away. Jack sat on the two rough concrete steps that connected the garage to the house. Huddled in the doorway under a thick jacket, her son gazed blankly into empty space. A shiver briefly ran over him.

"How long has he been like this?" She asked, turning her head a bit to address the giant while keeping her eyes trained on the teenager.

"Since this morning? I think." the giant's voice was feminine and very concerned, "When he didn't come down for school, I tried calling his phone. Eventually he came down but...he's been speaking gibberish. He's not broken, is he?"

June sighed, "No." Moving slowly and carefully, she knelt in front of Jack and tried to put herself in his line of sight. "Hey sweetie, can you hear me?"

He hummed, barely perceptible, but didn't answer. Hands clenching into fists, the mother tried again. "Jack? Jackson Darby, you need to listen to me, okay? You're on Earth, North America, United States, Nevada, Jasper, Home. Can you hear me?"

Very far away, Jack could hear her. His mother's voice was a constant and familiar presence that called him back from the-

_static/static/void_

_01010101010101010101_

_don't answer that_

_Electric pulses sending data, sending numbers, mixed with the synapses in his brain_

_01010101010101010101_

_Voice. Someone was talking, in words, not numbers, not whistles and clicks and the spaces between the numbers and the time it took to send information from one processor to another-_

_words_

_-rth...ada, Jasp-_

_Nevada_

-Nevada. Yes, he knew that. That was...Jasper, Home. Earth, America, U.S., Nevada, Jasper and Home. Home, he was at home, in the …... garage?

A face blurred into focus before him. He knew her. Jack struggled to get the words out of his throat, wrapped tightly as they were because his voice was shattered, broken/static...-wait, no. That was... gold? Not him though. Not Jack.

"Summer Lady." he rasped with a small smile. He was so happy to see her.

"Hi sweetie," June brushed his hair from his face and smiled back, even as he saw the worry in her eyes become _dark pools below broken buildings. Oil dripped off leaking pipes and shattered concrete in slow metronome off cadence to the swift predatory flick of fins on the strange metal monsters with sharp teeth that bowed to the five-faced judge upon a lying throne-_

"I need you to focus, alright?" A pause as she waited for him to nod. "Do you remember what set you off? It's very important."

Of course he remembered. He couldn't forget the-

_brightness_

_a thousand suns radiating waves of energy and power, a field of diamonds, _

_sharp crystalline edges fracturing into tens of thousands of possibilities and dimensions_

_breaking, cutting, the glass cracked and fell, wind chimes lost to fire and sirens as towers collapsed_

_-must destroy the Omega Lock._

_Stand coward, and face your ending-_

"Matrix." Barely a breath to hiss the word that burned the inside of his mind like an afterimage.

Outside of this, June pulled back, uncertain of what that meant. The giant shifting behind her made the woman turn. Beyond confused, Arcee hesitantly admitted, "The Matrix... is a relic that belongs to our leader. But Jack shouldn't know about it. None of us brought it up yesterday."

"It talked too much."

The two adults looked at him and then each other for clarification. Jack continued. "It was so loud. And now there's too much in my head,..." He blinked slowly, eyes looking in the general vicinity of the others but not quite focused. "It's broken. The star map..."

Rubbing the space between her brows, June sighed and looked at the giant desperately, "I don't suppose you understood that?"

"No." Arcee tilted her helm to study the human better, "Is this...common?"

"For Jack? It happens every once in awhile. But he usually pulls back to the present after a few minutes. And he's been like this all morning?"

The question was rhetorical, as Arcee had already answered it. But June was worried and frustrated. She could usually call him back and he'd snap out of it...

"Where's Hot Rod?" Jack suddenly jolted, looking around as if the individual was hiding from him. "He was just here...with you and Springer..."

Arcee leaned back in surprise, "How do you know those names?!"

"..." he blinked slowly at her again, obviously confused. Or he'd already forgotten the question. The latter was more likely as his gaze turned away a bit and down to the floor. Jack swayed.

Leaning forward to pull him against her before he fell over, June held her son tight and looked over her shoulder. "I think we need to go see your leader. I don't know what else to do. Usually I can get him to snap out of it but I've never seen him stuck in a vision so badly..."

A grimace. Arcee was definitely not looking forward to a reprimand from bringing another human to the base, right after yesterday, but something was wrong with Jack and it had something to do with them. "The ground bridge- No, that might hurt him right now and I don't want to make things worse. I'll carry you there."

They ignored Jacks muttering. "...bridge. Sounds like screaming spaces. Inverse doors to parallel plains-"

Transforming back into a bike, Arcee waited as June maneuvered Jack on and then climbed on behind him. With a loud engine rev, the bot fled out of Jasper and towards the base.

Optimus looked up sharply at Arcee's unannounced arrival. With Bulkhead and Bumblebee on patrol, she was supposed to be at the children' school to keep an optic on things. Ratchet's groan of "Not again, Arcee!" dragged his attention towards the two humans on her back.

Sliding to a halt, she let them off before transforming. "Jack needs help."

"Help? What kind of help does he expect-"

June cut the medic off, desperation obvious, "Jack has visions. I don't know what the Matrix is but it set him off worse than I've ever seen. And now he's in either a vision loop or- or a vision cascade and I can't snap him out of it."

Having a hard time believing all this, Ratchet started in on Arcee, lecturing on believing human nonsense while June shrilled back that he didn't know what he was talking about. Optimus ignored them, kneeling down to get a better look at Jack.

He hadn't moved since he'd gotten off Arcee, merely standing there with his eyes closed. Optimus spoke up softly, "Why are your eyes closed Jack?"

"It's bright."

A rasp answered him, and the Prime nodded in agreement. He knew well how bright the Matrix could be. And if Jack truly was a seer... he wasn't sure what the boy could be seeing but it was no doubt uncomfortable. "Can you look at me Jack?"

Even with his eyes closed, Jack could see the Matrix. It burned.

_Bright bright bright bright_

Jack had felt the visions, when he'd first seen the Autobots. The flicker of colors in the corners of his eyes, the whispers in his ears, were fairly common when it came to new things and new people. Even more so with an alien species it seemed. He'd known that he would have some visions once he was alone and let his guards down.

Then Optimus had walked into the room, and the star in his chest reached out blinding fingers of light and power directly into Jack's mind. A roar of voices and screaming and words words words-

Only years of practice ignoring the noise, picking apart what was real and what wasn't, kept him from succumbing right there and then. He'd struggled, to keep it together. Enough that he was pretty sure he came off as suspiciously nervous but that was better then letting the visions overtake him in their presence. Jack was very much not a fan of everyone thinking him crazy.

In it's glow once more, Jack cracked his eyelids open. He slowly looked up at the Prime.

Overlays of different sets of armor, different builds and faces, kept shifting the edges of the Prime. His optics stayed the same though. Always the same optics. Jack stared up into the glowing lights, looking for an anchor to hold against the _static/noise/color_ surrounding them.

Optimus gazed into twin shards of blue and was _dragged down, into radio static and lost transmissions, into empty space in the largest room he'd ever seen so far down below Iacon's surface-_

"Focus."

The rumbled word drew the attention of the others, turning to see Jack and Optimus staring silently at each other. They may not have been able to see whatever the pair saw, but they certainly felt the unfurling of an EM field. Not their Prime's, no. It extended from Jack, stitched together from experiences that were not his, memories that had not yet happened.

_Battlefield smoke and energon stained ground_

_Bodies scattered like toys_

_Were they small? Or was he? He couldn't remember _

_'I'm ninety percent secret compartments' an amused voice said_

Arcee and Ratchet flinched back from the noise and jangling against their sensors. As a human, June only felt a slight static in the air but knew it had to be coming from her son.

The seer whispered a demand, "Make it stop."

"Jack." Optimus quietly thundered, "Focus."

_Been here before_

The sudden thought/feeling of déjàvu from Jack flooded the Prime's sensors._ 'Here before and here again and what if this isn't even real?'_

"This is real Jack." The bot reached to lay a comforting servos on the boy's back as the rising wave of

_Layers collapsed, buckling from beneath_

_Their supports crumpled under fire, under the weight of a war that never ended_

_Towers and cities disintegrated into dust and powdered memories that could never be put back in place_

_Cybertron roared in anguish_

_Keep your helm down kid!_

"Here. Focus on me." Optimus thrust out his own EM field to shield the seer. "Not the Matrix, though I know it's bright. But on me." He noticed the turmoil as the seer's gaze flinched from the star in his chest, skipping away from the Prime's own bright echoes to desperately stay in the present.

"There was a library, on Cybertron." he started. Optimus may not have been a seer, and may not have ever had visions like the rising tide that kept tugging and trying to sweep them down into places that were impossible to escape from. But he did have millenia of not letting the Matrix pull him around. There was a trick he knew, that helped him when the Matrix became absolutely insistent on something and wouldn't let him focus on the real world.

"And in it, there was this little reading nook tucked up by a window..."

Prime continued softly, drawing the seer's gaze toward a tiny, harmless and soft place and time, a comforting pearl in the chaotic ocean of visions. Jack's EM field slowly soothed, drawn away from the chaos and pulled into something he could more easily handle. It filled with the touch of datapads and old stories.

Eventually, the visions ceded to the ghostly echoes he was far more used to handling and Jack pulled himself completely out of the visions. With a deep shuddering breath, he broke eye contact with Optimus and looked around. For the first time since he'd gone to sleep the night before, he was absolutely awake and present. Optimus drew back his servo while Jack turned back to him.

He cleared his throat awkwardly, "Um... thank you. And um, I should probably tell you, sometimes I get visions."

His mother sighed in relief as the big mech chuckled and sat back. "Thank you for telling me Jack."

Arcee groaned and took a seat while Ratchet shook his helm in mild disbelief. Looking up at them all, June suddenly cleared her throat. When everyone glanced over at her, she gave a hesitant smile. "Hi. I believe we had a rushed sort of introduction, but I'm June. It's nice to meet you."

Optimus nodded gravely and began to explain once more who they were and where they were from. All the while, Jack kept a wary eye on the Matrix. It still burned in his sight, although not as bright. He could even make it disappear entirely from his vision if he focused on the present enough.

It seemed the worst had passed.

.

.

.

* * *

A quick idea of Jack being a seer and how the Matrix would be a very strong catalyst for visions.


End file.
